


Making Mirrors

by Silvereye



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), M/M, Necromancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-19 13:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22578271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvereye/pseuds/Silvereye
Summary: "Your Highness, you're trying to raise the dead with a stick of chalk and a bottle of beer."Post-Infinity War, Thor attempts to resurrect Heimdall. It doesn't quite go as expected.
Relationships: Heimdall/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Making Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).



> days4daisy - I sort of mixed several of your prompts together, because they were all so good and I couldn't decide between them. I hope you like it. :D

It is in fact a dark and stormy night. Thor understands this is a tired cliche on Midgard. It has not stopped him from coming to the seashore with a stick, a bottle and a companion. He's already soaked through. It's somehow satisfying, more than dispelling the clouds would be.

"This is your worst idea so far," Valkyrie says, from under a rainproof parka.

"And yet you are here with me," Thor says. He attempts a smile. Judging by Val's wince it most definitely did not look like it. "Trust me. I may not be as experienced with magic as the rest of my family, but I know what I'm doing."

"Your Highness, you're trying to raise the dead with a stick of chalk and a bottle of beer."

"I am not. It's a bottle of _mead_."

Valkyrie rolls her eyes. "Thor. Are you... sure?"

Thor says nothing. He turns his back and draws a line on the ground instead. It sticks. He didn't entirely expect it to, in the face of pelting rain and his own very narrow magical ability. But there it is on the smooth wet pebbles of the beach. He inhales and draws another before he gets too afraid of what he's doing.

It's a brutally simple pattern, little more than a long narrow rectangle with two squares marked off on either end, one for Thor, the other for the person he's summoning. It would have been torturous to choose, but in a twist of fate he has no choice at all. A skilled mage could pit his own will against the laws of death. Thor is yet sane enough to know he's not very skilled at all, so he has to lean on his connection to Asgard, dead and gone as it is. Between Loki and Heimdall the latter's ties to Asgard are heavier. A longer life, and most of it spent in the Observatory. Thor would die trying to summon Loki on his own. He may be able to get Heimdall.

"Thor?" Valkyrie asks.

"It will be alright," Thor says and continues with the words of the spell. They're ancient, old enough that Allspeak is of no help. They come out heavy and barbed and for a moment Thor is sure his mouth must be bleeding.

Lightning strikes the other square. Thor definitely did not expect that. He raises his arm against the brilliance - entirely too late, of course - and then he realizes the green fractal lines running across his sight aren't aftereffects after all. For one thing, they're anchored to the summoning square.

This is it, then. Thor tries to think of Heimdall, of the Observatory and the Rainbow Bridge, ties heavier than death. Magic is not a physical thing, but if it were, he would be bracing his shoulders against it and heaving. Doing it feels instinctive, nothing like what little he learned of his mother's magic, a lot like calling lightning. But lightning is quick to come. This isn't. He strains against an immense, immovable thing. He might be screaming. This is eerily like Nidavellir, but with Nidavellir's star he only had to hold on for so long. Here and now he could be trying to move something that cannot be moved after all.

After half an eternity and an uneasy gnawing pain in his left eyesocket something does budge. The world outside the summoning pattern turns a dull shade of lilac and all of a sudden Thor's not pulling on something, he's pushing through instead. It feels like walking against a world-scouring wind, almost impossible, but not quite.

There is something on the other square. Too indistinct to recognize, but what - who else can it be? Thor takes a step forward, then another - and the second one is out of his own square, into the rectangle between them.

There is a silver sound and a stab of pain in his head, but the spell holds. The world tilts. Thor realizes the person on the other square is straining as hard as he is, and possibly for the exact same reasons.

"Heimdall," Thor says and takes another step forward. He can see Heimdall more clearly now, clear enough to break his heart. "Heimdall, are you- ?"

Dead? Yes. Here? Probably. Trying to drag me to Death? Well. Not impossible.

"Thor," Heimdall says, as if in confirmation. "You're..."

Something in Heimdall's voice is off. Thor squints at the half-formed apparition. Definitely Heimdall. But the way he's holding himself is not right. Thor knows Heimdall's posture and while he'd have a hard time enumerating the differences, this Heimdall's is different.

"Your eye," the apparition says, half-confused.

"Who are you?" Thor asks and wonders if he could yet drag himself free of the spell. He does not yet know what he's done, but he has not raised the dead.

"You knew me. I am Heimdall. King of Asgard."

"What? No, I am King of Asgard," Thor says stupidly.

The apparition regards him for a long moment.

"No," it finally says. "You are not. You are dead, Thor."

It's Thor's turn to stare at Heimdall. Then Thor laughs helplessly, until his sides hurt as much as his eye and heart and everything else, really. "Likewise. You are dead. I am trying to raise you." He hasn't raised the dead, and neither has the other Heimdall. They have made mirrors.

Thor's Heimdall would smile wryly here. This one does not. He takes a step closer, looks at Thor with earnest, appraising eyes and says: "Well then. Return with me."

It's tempting. Thor does not have much here. How hard would it be to slip into some other Thor's life, kneel to this Heimdall? He's different, but how different can he be, underneath simple surface habits? There is a certainty to Heimdall that no one else in Asgard possesses. He's unmoveable and unchangeable, even if in that world he's also the King of Asgard.

(There has to be a difference. This Heimdall hasn't known Thor since he was a child. He's still much older, has to be, but there isn't the awkward knowledge in Thor's mind that in a corner of Heimdall's brain there must be memories of Thor himself as a *very* small princeling. This Heimdall is different, so whatever he remembers is of the other Thor. And if he does not have those awkward memories, King Heimdall might - )

But Heimdall of Thor's own world would still be dead.

"No," Thor says and does not add I'm sorry.

King Heimdall cocks his head. Then he takes a few steps closer. He's straining against the magic, but not as hard as Thor did. With every step he looks more and more real until the man in front of Thor really could be his Heimdall. Same height, golden eyes, almost the same posture. "I see," he finally says.

Then he kisses Thor.

Thor does not know how he expected Heimdall to kiss. He didn't exactly expect Heimdall to kiss him at all, but his best guess would have been that Heimdall would kiss with the same perfect assurance with which he does everything else, unhurried and certain.

It's certain. That's where the similarity ends, because it's also rough, almost overwhelming. Thor does not have time to gather his thoughts before King Heimdall lets go of his hair, bows to his ear and whispers: "Death is down. I think this is what went wrong on your end. Best of luck, King Thor." He turns on his heel and walks away and Thor can feel the spell stretching, splintering. This is definitely not how you end a spell and he's not in his square that might offer some protection and - oh. Shit.

When the spell breaks it sounds like glass shattering, but the general sensation is more like thousands of wooden splinters hitting him.

*

"Please never do that again, Your Highness," Valkyrie says when Thor has regained consciousness. She's taken his mead. But then she probably deserves it, all things considered.

"Which part?" Thor asks.

It's daylight. Probably the next day, possibly later. Thor hasn't dared to ask. Valkyrie has carried - or dragged, Thor wouldn't know - him back to where she lives. The room is small and the bed narrow and Thor is fairly certain he's not going to move of his own volition any time soon.

Valkyrie's mouth twists. "You know which part I care about."

"He said death was down..." Thor says, thoughtful.

Valkyrie stares at him. "No. Absolutely not."

"Do you think it means down as in the sea?"

"Not before you're feeling much, much better."

*

Thor is fairly sure "down" does mean the sea. Valkyrie calls him an obsessed fool, a couple of less flattering names and then somehow convinces some of her friends to sail out to the fjord at night. Thor is grateful. He would have rowed if he would be doing this alone and that plan has obvious faults.

"For the record, I still think this is foolish," Valkyrie says when he's standing near a railing, ready to jump. The spell painted on his back and arms itches, but there is nowhere else to hold it. He can't exactly speak or draw chalk patterns down in the sea.

Valkyrie has neither her parka nor the life vest she usually wears at sea as a concession to her Midgardian friends' sensibilities. Her feet are bare. Thor cannot ask whether she's planning on diving after him if necessary, because he'd have to call it a stupid plan and that really would make a hypocrite of him.

"I know," Thor says. "I'm sorry."

He dives. The water is painfully cold. For a moment Thor wants to turn back, get on the boat, let Valkyrie sigh and hand him a blanket. This isn't his element at all - he's only an average swimmer because there never was any need for it on Asgard, and the utter lack of warmth in the sea is a singular terror. He does not belong here. But death is still down, so Thor swims downwards and hopes he hasn't found a singular way to kill himself.

At some interminable depth he has no way to gauge lines of light spark into existence all around him. They form geometric patterns a little like the spell on his back, unsymmetrical and lovely. Thor closes his eyes, flexes his hands and reaches out.

The last time felt like moving the immovable. This is different. The magic answers him easily. The world is not fighting him. His body is, however. His skin has gone numb from the cold and he feels little else besides the heat of the spell painted on him. The lights in the sea seem bright, but don't illuminate much. His lungs are protesting.

Thor only sees the body because it drifts between him and a line of light. There is no time to think and less to hesitate. He grabs the other person (Heimdall? is it Heimdall this time?) and kicks up. It's much harder to swim upwards, but it's not like there's a choice, so he strains against the burn in his lungs and the stiffness in his limbs and the unfortunate logic of weight and strength and all-sapping cold until he hits the surface, gets a breath and promply blacks out.

*

Later, Valkyrie informs him he almost drowned. Even later the captain of the boat tells him she went into the water to drag him back to the boat. Thor cannot say he's surprised about either.

But that comes later. When he wakes, it's in his own bed. It's evening, the late reddish sunlight slanting through his bedroom window. He feels wide awake and entirely bereft of energy. Someone is walking around downstairs and with a complicated stab of guilt and gratitude Thor knows it's Valkyrie. She has had more patience for him than anyone should.

"Thor," Heimdall says very quietly.

Thor turns his head with great effort. Heimdall is sitting on the floor near his bed, back against the wall. He looks gaunt and worried.

"You're here," Thor says.

Heimdall nods. "I am." He hesitates, edges closer, rests one arm on the bed. It almost touches Thor's, but not quite. He does not meet Thor's eyes. "Valkyrie told me what you did," he finally says. "You don't need me to tell you how dangerous it was."

"Everyone else is dead," Thor says and hears the desperation bleeding through. "I knew I could draw you back from the dead with a little luck and a lot of effort. I cannot regret it." A dreadful realization strikes him. "Unless... did I drag you out of Valhalla?"

Heimdall shakes his head. "You did not. The realms of death must be in disarray. I only remember fog and twilight and even that is like a dream."

"Good," Thor says. "I missed you."

"I can see that," Heimdall says, wryly.

"Did Valkyrie tell you about my previous spell?" Thor asks after a while.

"There was a previous spell?"

"The sea was my second attempt. With my first, I almost summoned a... he was Heimdall, but he was not you. A Heimdall from another world, I think. He must have been trying to raise his world's equivalent of me and our spells became tangled."

Heimdall nods. "Raising the dead is rare and such tangles more so, but it has happened once before."

"What happened?"

"The mage left for the other world. My gaze does not reach that far. I do not know what happened next." He glances towards Thor. "You stayed."

Thor closes his eyes. "You would still have been dead, even if I had been in that other world with that other Heimdall." He shivers. "He wanted me to return with him. To that world where he was the King of Asgard and his own Thor was dead."

"He was the King?" Heimdall asks.

"So he said."

Heimdall is quiet for a few heartbeats and then says: "I cannot imagine myself as the King."

"You would make a great one. Much more capable one than I have been."

"No one could have done better," Heimdall says, serious and unyielding. He finally takes Thor's hand. "You must not blame yourself for the crimes of others."

"And yet everything was lost in my reign."

Heimdall's fingers tighten around Thor's. "And on my watch. If you must assign blame."

"How could you have stopped it?"

"Precisely." Heimdall hums. "You still have me. Through a great effort of your own."

Thor is tired enough to say the first thing that comes to mind, which is: "Do I? Have you, that is." He wants to take it back, but it's too late and he's starting to fall asleep, so he braces himself against the exhaustion and continues: "That other Heimdall kissed me and that was the first time I've thought you might want me as I want you, because you were already a Watcher for my father and I am very young compared to you but apparently..."

"Thor," Heimdall interrupts him. "You really must sleep."

"No," Thor protests.

A rustle of cloth, Heimdall shifting his posture. Then a kiss on Thor's lips, light, but otherwise exactly what he expected. "We will talk when you are not falling asleep mid-sentence. Fear not. I will be here when you wake."


End file.
